Taylor Swift Aims to Shake Off China Knockoffs

Singer Taylor Swift performs during her "1989" world tour at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

Evan Agostini/AP

Taylor Swift is the latest to take on counterfeiting in China. As WSJ's Laurie Burkitt and Alyssa Abkowitz report:

As the American pop star’s popularity in China has exploded, so has a huge market of unauthorized Taylor Swift products, with e-commerce peddlers selling everything from fake perfume to pirated autographed guitars.

In an attempt to get rid of them, Ms. Swift is launching her own Taylor Swift-branded clothing with China’s two biggest e-commerce players, JD.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Her strategy is to use her star status to get them to stop selling products that don’t have rights to use her name, according to Heritage66Company, a Nashville-based branding company that is representing Ms. Swift and bringing her line to China.

Starting Aug. 8, JD.com and Alibaba’s Tmall marketplace site will carry Taylor Swift-branded $60 designer T-shirts, said Kate Liegey, chief operating officer of Heritage66. In September, she said, the singer will launch a women’s collection exclusively on JD.com, with clothing priced from $100 to $120. All products will have antipiracy hanging tags that enable customers to track their authenticity on the Web and offer an alternative to the plethora of fake Taylor Swift products available online, said Ms. Liegey.